Saturday, June 5, 2010

As long as I'm on about Texas singer-songwriters, here's ol' Jerry Jeff (website) doing a song I like for the visuals it provokes as well as relate to in a metaphorical way. I call this one "Motorcycle Mechanic's Lament" after 40 years in that saddle.

Apropos of nothing at all, I happen to know that Jerry Jeff and I owned the same year, make, and model of motorcycle. This was 1 of 1000 QE2 commemorative bikes imported to here. You got a certificate with it, and when I worked for the distributor of these I saw his certificate. I don't know if he still has his, but I still have mine. That was back before all the showbiz types got Harley-Davidsons and looked cooler and rode slower. I don't know if it was the intent or just a natural result of riding an anvil, but it's a lot harder to outrun the papparazzi on a Milwaukee Vibrator. Heh.

1977 Triumph Silver Jubilee

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One of the best things to come out of Texas besides I-10 and the only thing I'll miss when they secede is the musical genre of the 'Texas singer-songwriter'. Guy Clark (website) is one of my favorites.

The first song is possibly historical now, homage to and remembrance of a way of life that may be gone forever in the wake of the BP disaster. The second alternates between making me hungry and making me sick. Heh. All the white gravy in the world ain't enough to cover up Armadillo á la Goodyear and fried okra. Blechhh...

Goddamn, wannabe gotcha journalist James O'Keefe must know how to suck a dick. Way more hooker than pimp, O'Keefe must be able to lap Andrew Breitbart's mighty two-incher into a magnificent two-and-a-half inch erection and just go to town. The best part is that he's such an enthusiastic cock gobbler. O'Keefe rings up the Big Government blogger (and, really, that's what Breitbart is, nothing more, nothing less) and begs for another dose of Breitbart chowder. Seriously, this skeevy, ugly fucker could give porn stars lessons.

But such truly noble things are not what Breitbart demands. Like many conservatives, Breitbart is attempting to discredit the census because of fears that urbanization will tilt the balance of representation, among other things. But, oh, O'Keefe. The finest kind of cum whore is the kind who'll do anything for a chance to show how much he loves a cock. And O'Keefe ain't about to give up such bounty for anything like "journalism."

The problem they have is that it's in fact perfectly accurate. Sanchez may have gotten the information from a blogger, but it's more than likely the blog got its information from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League -- both of which have, as Sanchez suggested, fully documented that a number of the leading "respectable" anti-immigration organizations are in fact fronts created by white-supremacist ideologues.

Finally, it's worth remembering that the two people most associated with SB1070 in Arizona -- its coauthor, State Sen. Russell Pearce, and the law-enforcement officer whose immigration obsession inspired the law, Maricopa County's Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- themselves in fact have documented associations with Arizona neo-Nazis.

Fox may think they can whip this up, bloody shirt style, in favor of the Arizona law's advocates. I'd wager those same people are wishing they'd just let it quietly drop. Because Linda Sanchez told the truth, and they all know it.

Note to President Obama: Watch this and watch out for BP. They've had the CIA take out regimes before that displeased them by threatening their empire and bottom line. If you come down on 'em, don't pussyfoot around with 'em. Do it hard and from a position of power.

Sixty years ago, BP was called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, takes a brief look at the story of the company’s role in the 1953 CIA coup against Iran’s popular progressive Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh. Currently, as the result of Iraqi Invasions Part I and II; considering BP recently won the biggest Iraq oil contract, should make it obviously clear as to why Iran now rests within the brutal crosshairs of a savage and thirsty empire.

Friday, June 4, 2010

The "Mouth from the South", Ol' Bobby "Jive-Ass" Jindal, the man who wants no federal involvement in his state, until it's time to save his ass from something, now has a problem with a moratorium on offshore drilling:

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Gov. Bobby Jindal's contradictions may confuse you at first. While shaking his fist at BP and the federal government's inability to stop the river of oil poisoning the Louisiana coastline and wetlands, he's also unbending in his support for offshore drilling to continue.

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Fuck him. It's time to make a choice, Bobby, get with the program and shut the fuck up or clean up the next mess by yourself on Louisiana's budget. Figure it out soon.

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I'm quite sure the cartoonist only stopped after those "expectation balloons" because he ran outta space.

I still think Obama is doing OK under the circumstances. When yer up to yer ass in alligators, it's hard to remember yer main objective was to drain the swamp. He inherited a swamp chock fulla 'gators, and his (and our) sworn enemies and ugly stepsisters keep throwin' in fresh ones.

What a thing we have created. What an extraordinary horror our rapacious need for cheap, endless energy hath unleashed; it's a monster of a scale and proportion we can barely even fathom.

Because if you're honest, no matter where you stand, no matter your politics, religion, income or mode of transport, you see this beast of creeping death and you understand: That is us. The spill may be many things, but more than anything else it is a giant, horrifying mirror.

Finally (and a bit shockingly), I'm not hearing Pat Robertson or any of his cretinous cult of apocalypticans blame the gays, or voodoo, or anal sex, or reality TV for what's happening in the Gulf. Oil is, after all, completely non-denominational. It mocks all religions equally -- except, of course, the only one that really matters: capitalism.

This is how you know this is one of the more universally damning disasters of our time: No one really seems to know how to process it, much less react. The GOP is backtracking like terrified hyenas from Sarah "Queen of Duh" Palin's "drill baby, drill" mantra/ass tattoo, as suddenly the incessant Republican wail for more oil exploration, more drilling, more tax cuts for oil conglomerates don't just reek of the usual inbred cronyism; they reek of death and destruction the likes of which the country has never seen.

Truly, BP is behaving no better or worse than any other corporate spawn of Satan would in a similar situation. What's more, if you don't think every oil company on earth is right now kneeling before Beelzebub in gratitude that it wasn't one of their own wells that exploded, you haven't been paying attention.

That said, after all is said and done, it's gloomily nice to think our darkest disaster in a generation could somehow ultimately improve our attitudes, change our behavior, lighten our violent treatment of the planet. As someone recently noted, the BP spill isn't Obama's Katrina, it's actually Big Oil's Chernobyl. Meaning: a disaster so appalling and devastating it might very well alter the industry and change the course of our energy policy forever.

Is it possible? Or, more accurately, are we even capable of such a shift? Is there any silver lining to be found in that black and greasy gloom? This is, perhaps, the most imperative question of all: If we can produce a demon of such extraordinary scale and devastation, can we not also somehow create its exact opposite? Let us pray.

Yeah, that'll work. Yeesh. You think the oil execs aren't praying for deliverance from our wrath? That's more likely than shifting energy consciousness for a long time to come, which is happening a lot slower than the toxic ooze is crawling onto our shores.

BP is praying in particular that they are somehow spared from paying for all this and that it will shift to the taxpayers. It must not. If it puts 'em outta business, so fuckin' what? It won't. They make so much money they could do a 'money shot' and plug the leak with $100 bills and it would barely be a blip on their boardroom wall chart. They're only about the fifth most profitable oil company. There's plenty more just like 'em.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

So just to get this straight, Republicans, 'cause Jesus Christ knows your views shouldn't be misrepresented: with the unstoppable Gulf oil gusher poisoning everything in the sea and destroying the economies of probably four states at minimum, with Israel gettin' all raid-on-Entebbe with a ship that was trying to get food and medicine to starving people in Gaza, with Afghanistan becoming the war that it was always gonna become, with the need for jobs programs and housing programs and training programs in this country, with immigration, climate change, civil rights for gays, and more needing work and leadership and legislation, with all that shit plus whatever the fuck's going on with the European economy, some of you guys think that President Obama should be impeached because a guy was offered a job to not run for office.

California Republican and weepy, greedy, power-hungry bitch-boy Rep. Darrell Issa, a man destined to be a prison twink, is pushing that very notion. Issa believes that, because the White House has admitted that Rahm Emanuel asked Bill Clinton to offer a job to Rep. Joe Sestak if he'd clear the way for Arlen Specter to get the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Pennsylvania, the government should come to a screeching halt while Obama is investigated, impeached, and tried. Because why? Because that's what's first on everyone's mind right now?

Just as an aside, the visual of Issa pullin' a train for the Crips, the Bloods, the Mexican Mafia and last but not least, the Aryan Brotherhood, just makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over. Wait 'til those guys find out he made his considerable fortune selling the car alarms that may have stymied them professionally. Heh. He's one of the worst pols we've got out here in California, and we've got some bad ones.

As Joe Conason points out, this ain't something to be taken lightly. These fuckers play for keeps, damn the consequences on the route to taking back power. The entire affair, playing nonstop on Fox "news," has been elevated to "Obama's Watergate," thanks to Issa, who never misses a chance to demonstrate his extraordinary ability to fellate himself on live television. He's so good at it that Sean Hannity got jealous, bent over, and said, "Hey, look, I can actually get my tongue to my own anus."

Fine, if we're gonna get out the hyperbole machine, let's do something a little more appropriate: the Gulf oil spill is not Obama's Katrina. No, it's his 9/11: a sudden, explosive event that hit in the first part of the presidency and revealed to the nation a threat that crosses party lines. Now, howzabout DC Republicans get off their bullshit propaganda machine for a little while and saddle up to help? Howzabout the media do what they demanded of Democrats after 9/11 and tell Republicans to put aside "partisan bickering" for the "good of the nation"? Maybe a little help instead of mindless slash and burn?

Oh, wait. Don't forget that we're dealing with Republicans. The fact that the majority of the country doesn't give a rat's fuck about the Sestak nonsense doesn't matter. All that matters is that, at all costs, even at the cost of the country itself, they try to bring down the president. Again.

The Repugs are more than happy to commit any act including treason to get the power back so they can further enrich their masters at our expense. Luckily for us, they're all perverts and afraid of getting caught, or it'd be lots worse.

The far right likes to invoke Big Government like a bogeyman, a ghost to frighten the uninformed. But when they need Big Government they decry its absence. Bobby Jindal was trying to privatize much of Louisiana's government services. Had his approach been applied nationwide, the Federal government wouldn't have the resources he's demanding it use to save Louisiana's coast.

Can government get big and bloated? Of course. But there's a difference between starvation and a diet.

What the right fails to acknowledge is that big business, by its nature, is a bully. And you don't stop a bully by turning yourself into a 90 pound weakling. In fact, you may have to gain weight. Regardless, you have to exercise, changing pork to muscle.

It's going to take lots of muscle to truly hold BP responsible for the massive impact of its failure.

In short, make sure Big Government is big enough to keep Bigger Business in check. Or who knows what price we'll pay.

Just know that we have been and will continue to pay until government, that's you, Barry, grows the balls to leave BP and others face down bleeding in the dirt for transgressions against us. I mean that both figuratively and literally.

Note to President Obama: Make me'n Fixer Prez For A Day and we'll show you how to do it. Call it 'dungaree liberty on Big Biz assholes'. It won't be pretty, but it will be educational for you and Big Corpora and entertaining for us and our fellow Americans.

Like a robot lacking in judgment, stuck on a predetermined path - that's how the government is behaving in its handling of the aid flotillas to the Gaza Strip. The announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the security cabinet meeting Tuesday that the blockade of Gaza will continue and that Israel will keep on using force to prevent ships from entering Gaza's port suggests that the foolishness continues and no lessons have been learned from this week's incidents.

Instead of taking the initiative and developing a political exit strategy from the crisis, Netanyahu and Barak are digging themselves deeper into the quagmire. The government apparently believes its own public relations, according to which Israel was the victim of "Al-Qaida supporters." If this is the case, it must immediately dismiss the heads of the security and intelligence services who failed to issue warnings in time and did not prepare accordingly to meet this new and dangerous enemy. How does Israel plan to deal with the Irish ship the Rachel Corrie, which is on its way to the Gaza Strip? Will it also argue that the Irish government, which has given this ship its backing, is a member of Al-Qaida?

Any bets that Haaretz' offices will be mysteriously bombed by 'Palestinian terrorists' pretty soon? Or maybe the IRA. Mossad'll think of something.

When the economy tanked last year, and Barry was talking about the stimulus plan, I would kvetch that there's a "shovel-ready" project in my neighborhood, namely the road I live on. It's been fer shit for years thanks to them replacing the gas lines in the street (they just tossed asphalt over the trenches) and about 10 years of winter (and the heavy-duty snowplows that grind over it) since they paved it correctly, and it looks like the Moon. Been kvetching a long time.

Well, seems, for the first time in memory, somebody in the local government heard and actually listened to me. A few weeks ago they began, not just my street, but the whole approach to the Long Island Expressway that's 3/4 mile up the road. New overpass, cloverleaf, and adding an extra lane each way to the secondary road which feeds it. It'll be 2 years until they're done.

So now I'm not just worrying about the fillings being shaken out of my head (I drive like I'm on the slalom on the B.F. Goodrich Test Track) when I come home but it's a pain in the ass with the increased traffic thanks to constant pattern changes. What a fucking mess.

I know it's been sorely needed for years and I'm glad some Long Islanders are back to work, and I know it's going to be good when it's done, but all I was hoping for was a little asphalt rolled over the top of my road to make it smooth. Ah well, I asked for it ...

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

From the New York State Government, second only (sometimes) to them Wes' Coas' folks in Sacramento. Our Rethugs had their primary and one of the guys trying to be the next governor is my county executive (the turncoat democrat). Res Ipsa sums up the jocularity succinctly:

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Lazio is the putz who blew an election by trying to physically intimidate Hillary Clinton live on television. Levy is a porn-stache-wearing immigrant-bashing party-switching clown. And Ed Cox is Richard Nixon’s son-in-law.

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If Andy Cuomoain't our next governor, it'll be because he self-destructed in the next 6 months. But this is New York. FDR could be the governor and he'd still have to deal with the useless blobs of biomatter called the New York State Legislature.

Hazmat suits but no respirators. That arrogant Limey bastard CEO says it may be 'food poisoning' from 'unsanitary conditions' in the temporary worker camps. Hey, asshole, if there's one thing Americans know that Limeys don't, it's how to cook in outdoor situations. Fuck, the English can't cook in a kitchen. Yeesh.

Someone said on TV last night that BP may not have had a clean-up strategy, but they sure as hell had a legal strategy ready to go. The respirator thing is just another plan that's going to backfire on them.

Their larger plan is that they know there are going to be tens of thousands of claims, lawsuits, litigation of all sorts. Their plan? Keep 'em all tied up in court until all the plaintiffs are dead.

“At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital,” Wunstell said. “When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned.”

Knowingly exposing workers to toxins and carcinogens without safety equipment due to their (well-founded) fears of legal liability that is going to come back and bite them on the ass and rightly so. We're a very litigious society. This time, that's a good thing.

If you were to draw an oily line from the first exploitation of oil in the Middle East by the British in 1901 (they were in the process of converting their then world dominating naval fleet from coal to oil and were in desperate need of it) to the overthrow of the secular democratic leader in Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1953, to the Iraq War, to the criminal environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, BP would have been there.

BP and its American counterparts are part of the corporate oligarchy that run governments when it comes to energy policy. They don't take orders from sovereign nations; they give them. [...] There is no brake on their malfeasance, greed and criminal behavior, nor their ability to get nations to go to war, overthrow democratically elected leaders, and to get away with pollution of proportions beyond the imagination.

For a nation that can’t stop bragging about how great and powerful it is, we’ve become shockingly helpless in the face of the many challenges confronting us. Our can-do spirit was put on hold many moons ago, and here we are now unable to defeat the Taliban, or rein in the likes of BP and the biggest banks, or stop the oil gushing furiously from the bowels of earth like a warning from Hades about the hubris and ignorance that is threatening to destroy us.

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Instead of staring mesmerized at the tragedy in the gulf, like spectators at a train wreck, we should be trying to regain that innovative can-do spirit that made America the greatest of nations.

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The result of the American people being told, for the last 30 years, that they can have everything for nothing, that they can spend beyond their means, rape the environment, and not pay to support the national infrastructure (except for our military infrastructure, you betcha).

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

At the risk of being called an anti-Semite once again (not that I care anymore), at what point to we say "enough is enough"? At what point does Israel have to pay a price for their actions? At what point do we say, "Israel has become what it despises the most"? At what point do American Jews stop having the knee-jerk reaction to protect and defend anything that Israel does to the point of labeling anyone who disagrees an anti-Semite? And, at what point do our politicians stop kowtowing to Israeli lobbying groups in this country?

What Israel is doing - squeezing the Palestinians out of the West Bank through continued settlement expansion (my people called it Lebensraum), through the siege of Gaza, and disproportionate responses to any Palestinian transgression - is indefensible and unjustified under the blanket statement of "protecting Israel's security". Thanks to our alliance and unquestioned protection of Israel, our troops in the region are put in more danger than they already are. Our diplomatic efforts in the region are consistently undermined by Israel's unilateral aggression toward its neighbors, tainting us with the stench of their inhumanity.

JERUSALEM – Israeli commandos rappelled down to an aid flotilla sailing to thwart a Gaza blockade on Monday, clashing with pro-Palestinian activists on the lead ship in a botched raid that left at least nine passengers dead.

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Their ruthlessness, their indifference to the human suffering (the direct result of Israel's policy toward the Palestinian areas) just across the border, and the Israeli government's adamant defense of those policies only makes them a 21st Century Nazi Germany. They learned well from those who once oppressed them.

As everyone in this country is complaining about how we're going broke (thanks to the two wars we're fighting, an underlying result of our alliance with Israel), I have a serious problem sending billions of dollars of my tax money (in the form of direct payments and military support) over there. I'm tired of our government looking the other way when Israel persists in implementing their plan to take whatever land the Palestinians have left and either shove them across the Jordan River or over the border into Egypt, or just kill as many as they can.

The United States can no longer afford to give the Israelis diplomatic cover in the U.N. with their veto power over the Security Council. I am very sorry for what my people did to theirs, there is no excuse or justification and will be a stain upon Germany for centuries to come, but that does not make Israel 'untouchable' (because, underneath it all, the label "anti-Semite" is inferring Nazism and if you say a cross word about Israel ...). It does not make them unaccountable for their actions and the consequences resulting. They certainly have no right to determine U.S. policy in the region.

If we expect to ever get our troops out of the Middle East, our policy toward Israel has to change. If we ever want to stop living in fear of a terrorist attack, the likes of which we saw here on 11 September, we have to distance ourselves from a government we have no control over. It's time to stop treating Israel as the 51st State.

In going to war in Gaza in late 2008, Israeli military and political leaders hoped to teach Hamas a lesson. They succeeded. Hamas learned that the best way to fight Israel is to let Israel do what it has begun to do naturally: bluster, blunder, stonewall, and fume.

Hamas, and no less, Iran and Hezbollah, learned early on that Israel’s own embargo against Hamas-ruled Gaza was the most sophisticated and powerful weapon they could have deployed against the Jewish state.

Here in Israel, we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel’s Vietnam.

'Seige' is a much better word for what Israel is doing to Gaza than 'blockade' because it invokes a medieval picture of trying to starve the Palestinians to death.

THE BOROWITZ REPORT – In a new video that is light on his usual threats but heavy on admiration, Osama bin Laden admits that he is “professionally envious” of oil giant BP’s massive oil spill, saying that it puts his efforts to create destruction and chaos to shame.

“There are times in an evildoer’s life when one has to stand back and admire a job well done,” Mr. bin Laden says in the video. “BP, you blow me away.”

The Al-Qaeda mastermind adds that his first thought upon seeing BP’s spill was, “Man, I’ve got to step up my game.”

It didn't take long after best-selling author Joe McGinniss moved in next door to the Palins in Wasilla for Sarah Palin to deploy a deceptive "Joe the Pervert-Stalker" campaign. Glenn Beck jumped in calling for a boycott of Random House which is publishing the upcoming book about Palin, and pretty soon journalists were lining up on either Palin's or McGinniss's side of the issue.

It all started a few days ago with a Facebook entry in which Palin complained that the new neighbor was looking over in the direction of her house, her little garden and the "family's swimming hole" (better known as Lake Lucille). Palin claims she was forced her to run indoors because she was standing out on her lawn wearing a tank top and shorts. Later, she accused the 67-year-old grandfather from Boston of "peering at her young daughter" and told Glenn Beck that McGinniss "better leave her kids alone." Palin's Facebook page:

Palin's throwing around allegations of sexually motivated voyeurism, based on what? It's even more ridiculous because the place McGinniss is renting had been a residence for men recently released from prison who were recovering addicts, said Shannyn Moore in her Alaska blog, "Just a Girl from Homer."

I'm sure that didn't bother her a bit, but a political writer noted for telling the truth, whoa Nellie!

And of course "Leave The Children Alone" Becky said that about the time (s)he trashed Malia Obama. Asshole.

Palin's "hysterical" reaction to him was unexpected, McGinniss told the Washington Post by phone from Wasilla. "I'm getting an insight into her character, into her ability to incite hatred, that before I only knew in the abstract."

Propinquitous observation is paying off already. Turn over some rocks, Joe, you got her scared. This oughta be good.

I read McGinniss' Going To Extremes years ago, about a year he spent in Alaska. Good book. The guy gets it done.

As it says in the sidebar: "The right is nothing if not filled with liars and hypocrites". Here's hoping Mr. McGinniss can prove it once and for all in "The Queen Of The Tiny-Brained Has No Clothes".

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is attempting to amend the 2005 Stolen Honor Act, which criminalized false claims of military service, in order to punish people who lie about being in combat -- people like Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D), a Senate candidate.

The Republican candidate for President Obama's old Senate seat has admitted to inaccurately claiming he received the U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year award for his service during NATO's conflict with Serbia in the late 1990s.

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First off, all politicians will lie about anything if they think they can get away with it. Secondly, if anybody is a poster child for lying and obfuscation, it's the GOP. Generally, boys (and that's what they are, mostly; old white men) if you piss into the wind, you end up getting wet.

Daddy Frank on the oil spill in terms of the cultural and political right-wing wars against Obama.

FOR Barack Obama’s knee-jerk foes, of course it was his Katrina. But for the rest of us, there’s the nagging fear that the largest oil spill in our history could yet prove worse if it drags on much longer. It might not only wreck the ecology of a region but capsize the principal mission of the Obama presidency.

Before we look at why, it would be helpful to briefly revisit that increasingly airbrushed late summer of 2005. Whatever Obama’s failings, he is infinitely more competent at coping with catastrophe than his predecessor. [...]

But life isn’t fair, and this president is in a far tougher spot in 2010 than his predecessor was in 2005.

When Katrina hit, Bush was in his second term and his bumbling was not a shock to a country that had witnessed two-plus years of his grievous mismanagement of the Iraq war. His laissez-faire response to the hurricane was also consistent with his political DNA as a small-government conservative in thrall to big business. His administration’s posture toward the gulf region had been telegraphed at its inception, when Dick Cheney convened oil and gas cronies, including Enron’s Ken Lay, to set environmental and energy policy. The Interior Department devolved into a cesspool of corruption, even by its historically low standards, turning the Bush-Cheney antigovernment animus into a self-fulfilling prophecy and bequeathing Obama a Minerals Management Service as broken as the Bush-Cheney FEMA exposed by Katrina.

NEW ORLEANS — In another serious setback in the effort to stem the flow of oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers said Saturday that the "top kill" technique had failed and, after consultation with government officials, they had decided to move on to another strategy.

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Since corporations are considered persons, how about building a prison large enough to put BP in it?

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"... That's US here at the Brain! Sittin' all alone out in the cold, thanklessly freezin' our beboops off, lookin' for a chance to lob a few at the enemy and praying for a secondary explosion, wonderin' if it's all worth it or if it will make any difference in the scheme of things ..." - Gordon